"chief evangelist" -- standard business jargon? -- since when?

[Dave Wilton]

The business use of "evangelism" and "evangelist" has been around since the
1980s. It's a specialized application of the OED's sense d. of evangelist,
"a zealous advocate of a cause or promulgator of a doctrine."

Evangelism is a subset of marketing focused on word of mouth techniques and
generating "buzz," so the terms "evangelist" and "marketing officer" are not
exactly synonymous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelism_marketing


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Dan Goncharoff
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 4:02 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "chief evangelist" -- standard business jargon? -- since when?

"Evangelist" seems to have replaced "marketing officer" in job descriptions.
DanG


On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 3:36 PM, George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      "chief evangelist" -- standard business jargon? -- since
> when?
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>
> From NY Times, March 20, 2012, Business Section, p. 1, col. 5, a story
that
> Google is raising its charges for providing maps used in on-line ads:
>
> =93If you are a site just looking to put a pizzeria on a map, it=92s no
big
> deal, but if you are trying to put a brand around your mapping, it=92s a
> bi=
> g
> deal,=94 said James Fee, chief evangelist at WeoGeo, which provides
> locatio=
> n
> data. =93Google says it will affect a very small number of users, but I
> hav=
> e
> heard it will touch 30 or 40 percent of people who really depend on maps
> for their business. It could cost you tens of thousands of dollars a
> month.=
> =94
>
> GAT
>
> --=20
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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